David Brock of Media Matters, is the new upholder of truth in the media. You probably know him as the guy who admits that he used to lie, cheat and steel for the right wing, and hasn’t gotten around to admitting that he is now doing the same thing for the left wing.
Well, Mr. Brock has written a letter to Donald Rumsfeld, complaining that Rush Limbaugh should not be broadcast on Armed Forces radio. Apparently, Brock disagrees with Rush, or doesn’t think he is funny, or whatever. A couple of thoughts:
First, you can say what you want about Limbaugh (I haven’t listened in years) but he is popular, and if we are going to ship guys half-way around the world and get them shot at, we might as well also give them what they want to listen to on the radio.
Second, Brock’s technique is to cherry pick Limbaugh’s comments that are either wrong, not all that well reasoned, or of questionable taste. Well, I defy him or anyone else to talk on the radio for three hours a day in an unscripted format and not say the occasional dumb thing. Hell, I can’t talk to my wife for three minutes without getting into trouble.
Third, if you look at what the AFRN puts on, it is pretty diverse. They have Limbaugh, but they also have lots and lots of stuff from those pinkos at National Public Radio, and Paul Harvey, and Dan Rather and ESPN and so on.
Finally, it always re-affirms my faith in human nature to see liberals coming out in favor of government censorship, whenever they don’t agree with a speaker’s ideas. In his letter Brock is unhappy that Limbaugh talked about some new female police chiefs, and made a joke that–because there was a woman in command at Abu Ghraib, we could look forward to some abuse at American prisons:
If we've got four new female police chiefs out there, then I guess we can watch out for some naked pyramids among prisoners in these new jailhouses that these women ran, because we had a woman running the prison in Abu Grab [sic].
According to Brock, this was a problem because, at the same time, the administration was denouncing the abuse:
Meanwhile, Bush administration officials continue to denounce the abuse at Abu Ghraib
I guess the new standard Brock is advocating is that all commentators on AFRN have to toe the administration line. Oops, there goes NPR and Dan Rather.
I stopped listening to Limbaugh's comments years ago. What I heard I thought I could at least argue with if it made sense. Not much of what he said was worth arguing with for the simple reason it sounded like he was taking something to cause unreasonable bias, it comes out he was.
Liberal once meant open mind. That inertpratation has long since evaporated in the minds of Limbaugh and his compatriots.
Posted by: Richard Schrenker | July 30, 2005 at 05:29 PM